County voters turn out in big numbers, support Republicans

While the presidential race in Florida was a tight victory for President Barack Obama as Tuesday night slipped into Wednesday morning, St. Johns County voters left no doubt as to their allegiance.

In no real surprise for the heavily Republican area, county voters chose Mitt Romney over Obama by a margin of about 69 percent to 30 percent.

That was similar to the 2008 election when Sen. John McCain garnered 65 percent of the vote in this county.

Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than a 2-to-1 ratio in St. Johns County, which showed in most races.

Despite the strong Republican presence in the county, voters rejected Republican Party initiatives to reject three Supreme Court justices, who were up for retention votes, as well as all of the major Constitutional Amendments that the Republican Legislature put on the ballot.

One thing is clear from data provided by the St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections website: County voters cared about this election. In a county with more than 152,000 registered voters, more than 75 percent of them (115,093) cast ballots.

GOP candidate Connie Mack dominated Bill Nelson in the race for U.S. Senate, picking up 60 percent of the vote here. But the push from St. Johns County wasn’t nearly enough as Mack was defeated by about 1 million votes statewide.

Although there had been some efforts by the Republican party to encourage the ouster of Florida Supreme Court justices R. Fred Lewis, Barbara J. Pariente and Peggy A. Quince, county voters elected to retain all three. They all received about 57 percent support form county voters for retention.

That was not as high as the state overall, where Lewis, Pariente and Quince all received about 67 percent in support of retention.

As for the 11 amendments on the ballot, county voters were not greatly in favor of them.

With an amendment needing 60 percent of the vote for passage, just three reached that level here: Nos. 2, 9 and 11.

Those were also the only ones showing enough support among voters statewide for passage.

Among the more controversial amendments to fail were the Prohibition on Public Funding of Abortions (No. 6) and Religious Freedom (No. 8). Those two amendments each received about 44 percent of the state vote. County voters were in favor of No. 6 (54 percent) but not No. 8 (47 percent).